401): The grewsome belief in the "Raven Mocker" is universal among the Cherokee and has close parallels in…
- Date of account
- Material collected chiefly 1887-1890; published 1900
- Source
- Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology
- Reference
- Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology · selected passage 185
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English with Cherokee names and material translated from oral testimony
- Translation
- Collected and edited by James Mooney
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
401): The grewsome belief in the "Raven Mocker" is universal among the Cherokee and has close parallels in other tribes
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention only120. The Raven Mocker (p. 401): The grewsome belief in the "Raven Mocker" is universal among the Cherokee and has close parallels in other tribes. Very near to it is the Iroquois belief in the vampire or cannibal ghost, concerning which Schoolcraft relates some blood-curdling stories. He says: "It is believed that such doomed spirits creep into the lodges of men at night, and during sleep suck their blood and eat their flesh. They are invisible" (Notes on the Iroquois, p. 144). On one occasion, while the author was among the Cherokee, a sick man was allowed to die alone because his friends imagined they felt the presence of the Raven Mocker or other invisible witches about the house, and were consequently afraid to stay with him. The description of the flying terror appears to be that of a great meteor.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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